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solar power is awesome and harnessing it is awesome too because it's just kind of

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usually around during the day especially in somewhere like mexico while we are

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right now well it can power devices if you have solar panels connected to them

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and it can power cities if you have giant networks of solar panels connected

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to them it can also make it kind of hard to see which is why i'm squinting

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from now until june 20th 2016 you can pre-order the MSI gtx 1070 founders

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edition through massdrop learn more at the link in the video description

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one thing that has gotten rather popular lately is the advent of solar panels for

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stuff like hiking or solar panels for charging things like small battery banks

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or your cell phone seven eight watt five watt solar panels that claim to be able

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to charge your device that sounds pretty cool and you see pictures of people

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strapping them to their backpacks and stuff and then going hiking through the jungle

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how applicable is that how well do those actually work that is the sole reason

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why we came to mexico okay that's not necessarily true but it is one of the

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things we'll be doing here the first two solar panels i want to introduce are the

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anker 8 watt and the all powers 8 watt they look actually almost identical but

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there are some minor differences they both claim 8 watts at 5 volts and 1 amp

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so i might have limited knowledge here but

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i don't think that's how that works but oh well we'll test that later on both of

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them have little cable loops where you can attach carabiners or something like

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that to attach it to your bag both have little pouches where you can manage

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things like maybe putting a battery in and both have a tethered usb port so you

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can move them around which is actually rather nice neither of them feature a

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kickstand neither of them feature a battery these are pretty bone standard

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solar panels the goal zero offering is a seven watt number which closes using

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magnets which is actually kind of nice has little loops for carabiners comes

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with two carabiners and has its pouch on the outside inside pouch there is a 12

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watt connection a usb connection a connection for their guide 10 which is

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another device that goal zero offers and a chain input so that you can connect a

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bunch of these together it also features no battery no kickstand and claims that

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it can charge your phone entirely in one to two hours so we're gonna see how true

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that is so when it comes to these solar panels they have lots of warnings and

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notices and whatnot on them telling you that efficiency will be hampered if you

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have a cloudy day if it's if it's not that sunny if it's different various

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conditions can affect it if it's not tilted towards the sun

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well we're in mexico it's pretty obvious where the sun is there are very very few

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clouds i really don't think that's going to be an issue so let's see how well

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they stack up to their claims so what i have here is a usb amperage voltage

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tester that is plugged into the unit and then hidden under it because it's

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incredibly hard to read in the sun then it's about noon-ish and the sun is right

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above us so i'm just going to hold the solar panel basically like this and try

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to read the reader which will be below it and i'll tell you guys the readout

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and then maybe we'll try to get some footage of it but that's going to be really difficult so the all powers is

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the first one that i'm testing and with a little bit of plus or minus on both of

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these calculations it's reading at about five ish volts or 4.9 and it's reading

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at about .85.9 amps the anker solar panel is

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running at about 0.9 amps and about 4.9

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to 5 volts unsurprisingly extremely similar to the all powers eight watt so

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the goal zero is a little bit harder to read because the connector is fixed into the

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body instead of being on a tether but we're running at about 4.9

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volts and waiting for it to switch over

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about 0.7 amps so not quite as strong as

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the other ones edel and i noticed some key differences

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between the goal zero panel and the anchor slash all powers panels in

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between testing one eds will notice that there's a much more glossy finish on the

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goal zero and a very much matte finish on the anchor and all power solar panels

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also the line density on the anchor and all power panels is much higher than the

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goal zero panel and the goal zero logo takes up more space than the anker and

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all powers one so there's just overall more panel and this big guy gets a solid

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five volts one amps in the sun so what one is this one i didn't introduce it

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well this is a 20 watt neck tech which looks like it's basically built in the

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same place as the all powers and anchor solar panels the reason why i wanted to

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show this off is the other smaller ones are often shown off as hiking solar

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panels but in not completely perfect conditions aren't always that great so

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this one did exactly five volts one amp in the sun which a little weird

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considering it claims to be a 20 watt panel my battery can take 1.7 amps but

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it's only outputting 1 amp if it wanted to be 20 watts as far as i can tell at 5

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volts because of usb 2.0 it should be two amps out of both of its output ports

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because it has usb 1 and usb 2. well usb

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number one and usb number two not usb version one usb version two don't worry

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about it anyways so i'm a little bit not stoked about the specs on all of these

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guys although if i'm doing something wrong in terms of calculations let me know in the comments down below but now

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let's test in the shade one of the most commonly shown off scenarios for these

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solar panels is just attaching them to the back of your backpack and going for

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a hike in the jungle or a forest that's going to cast shade on them for a huge

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percentage of the time and they are almost never going to be at an ideal

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angle so let's test that as well what i'm doing is i stepped into the shade

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just outside of the sunlight and i have them vertical while the sun is directly

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above us this is not an ideal position the crazy 20 watt that we just tested is

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running at 5 volts which is great kind of expected that and at about

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0.65 amps which is actually really solid

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considering how it's positioned that can probably be attributed to the fact that

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it not only has a third solar panel but it's also much larger per solar panel

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than the other guys the width is about the same but the height has increased a

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very noticeable amount this guy is much smaller standing in more or less the

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same spot the goal zero struggles to get to 0.1 of an amp sometimes going as low

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as 0.08 sometimes going as high as 0.12

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not very much you're going to struggle to charge a lot of devices on this the

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anchor doesn't fare all that much better 5 volts just like all the rest of them

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all the time its amperage goes at about 0.15 to 0.17

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still a little bit sketchy if you want to charge a lot of different devices my

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cheero tuff would reject all of these the all power is yet again proving that

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the anchor and the l powers are probably more or less the same thing having the

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same voltage and save amperage as the anchor so our camera is giving us a

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temperature warning and to be completely honest i'm done we've tested in the sun

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we've tested in the shade we've tested improper angles all that kind of stuff i

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don't think brand ended up being a huge factor here what ended up being a huge

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factor here was surface area the big

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massive one with three panels and a taller overall design did quite well in

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the shade and in the sun the anchor and the all powers which were more or less

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the same performed more or less the same

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and then the goal zero which had some glossy panels which as far as i know

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seems like a poor choice but i don't design these things so i could

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be wrong and had smaller overall panels didn't do quite as well as the others

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fairly straightforward one thing that i am frustrated about is the math on this

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kind of stuff maybe i just have no idea what's going on in terms of solar

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calculations you guys can let me know on twitter at luke underscore afr go there

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call me stupid let me know in the comments down below but i don't understand how 5 volts 1 amp equals 7

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watts or 8 watts and how 5 volts one amp and five volts one amp on one solar

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panel equals 20 watts i have no idea how that's supposed to work and we didn't

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get those calculations here what we did get here was like in ideal conditions

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five watts on all of them so yeah let me

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know comments down below another thing that i did find was that you're probably

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not gonna want these seven or eight watt panels

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i would recommend something like the 20 watt panel at a minimum why because the

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wattage number no because of the three larger panels that were on that charger

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giving you much more dynamic positions that you can be in it can be on your

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backpack at a not ideal position and still charge a fair amount off the sun

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another thing to pay attention to is what you're charging certain devices

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aren't gonna like being charged at not one full amp i know my chiro tuff is a

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little bit particular about different things because it wants to save the

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battery that's inside which is a good thing for a durable battery and the

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slightly less scrupulous chiro ingress charger didn't care as

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much and was able to charge off of all of them at pretty much whatever amperage

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you threw at it so pay attention to what battery you're pairing with these things

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get a bigger better panel and i hope you guys enjoyed the video

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device so head over to linustalkting.com and check it out

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if you liked it stay subscribed like it dislike it do whatever you want buy a

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t-shirt not this one i guess well you can but if

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you want one of ours during the video description down below buy some stuff on amazon using our

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affiliate code probably a bigger than seven or eight watt solar panel and

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check out the forum to discuss about how i probably don't know math because all

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of the companies did some weird math anyways i'll see you guys next time